The following article on “Mastering the Basics,” is drawn from the final chapter of Winning the Fight, focused on training and selection. We are happy to announce that “Winning the Fight: A Conceptual Framework for Combat Performance Enhancement” is now available on Amazon Kindle at the link below. Whether you are a law enforcement professional, military service-member, scholar or responsible citizen, Winning the Fight will revolutionize the way you approach your training and help you to greatly improve your combat performance as an individual or as a unit.

Limited penetration techniques (or what we refer to as “shallow entry”) have a number of applications. In the most general terms, the purpose of executing a shallow entry as opposed to a deep entry is to minimize your exposure to danger areas deeper in the room and to remain closer to the entry door, making it easier for you to pull back or break contact in an emergency. Shallow entry techniques are more common and widespread than many people realize. For example, when a four-person team executes a traditional “points of domination” room entry technique, the third and fourth person into the room are actually executing a shallow entry (limited penetration) movement to compliment the deep entry executed by the first two assaulters. Therefore, learning the correct footwork for shallow entry can be useful regardless of which CQB system you employ.

One very effective drill that can help refine individual CQB performance is the “track drill,” also referred to as “lane training.” The track drill comes from combat-proven special operations training techniques. When conducting CQB training, special operations units will often have several instructors on the catwalk, each instructor responsible for watching and assessing a single student. The track drill modifies this procedure (and in some ways improves upon it) while allowing a single instructor to run training without needing the help of additional instructors.

The first article on CQB footwork focused on some basic movement principles for turning right and turning left when coming into a room. However, that article focused primarily on a head-on approach to the door or an angled approach with the “weak side” (non-weapon side) closest to the wall. Generally, approaching the door from the weak side (left side for right-handed shooters) is easier than approaching from the strong side. Therefore, there are some additional footwork techniques and variations that can make a strong-side approach easier and more effective.

It is one thing to learn or understand new footwork techniques. It is another to be able to apply those techniques effectively in a high-stress situation. Mastering footwork requires a great deal of practice and as we mentioned earlier, it is not just about the quantity of practice. The quality of practice is even more important. This article covers some practice/training techniques for refining and optimizing your CQB footwork.

One of the most fundamental CQB movements is moving through a doorway and turning to either the right or left to clear the corner. This article does not claim to offer the only way to clear a corner, but rather aims to offer a series of concepts and options to help each individual or team refine their own techniques to a more advanced level.

In the coming weeks and months, Special Tactics will be releasing a series of articles, online courses and books covering the topic of “Advanced Close Quarters Battle.” This first article is a primer to understand what Advanced CQB is and what it is not. In our opinion, advanced CQB is not about learning new advanced techniques but rather about mastering the basic techniques to an advanced level.

Special Tactics is honored to provide the world’s first online tactical academy integrated with a full-featured, professional/social networking site dedicated solely to the tactical community. The Tactical Network functions like any other social or professional networking site but provides unique benefits that make it the ideal platform for the tactician, including enhanced security and privacy options. Special Tactics online digital courses cover a range of subjects and the Special Tactics staff and contributor network will continually add new courses and update existing course features and content. Courses include interactive presentations, videos, animations, quizzes and instructor tools.

The fundamentals for planning a good defense are the same, whether you are a military planner preparing to defend South Korea, a law enforcement/security professional assigned to secure a compound/event or a citizen trying to defend your home and family from an intruder. This article is the first in a 3-part series on defensive planning. This first part deals with anticipating the threat and making contingency accordingly.

For this week's discussion, we would like to hear your ideas for how to conduct, realistic and effective training, despite the ever-present challenges of limited resources. Whether you are a military leader, law enforcement officer, security professional or armed citizen, you have likely come up with some creative training techniques to make the most of limited time and resources. Feel free to include ideas relating to any aspect of tactical training

According to the Special Tactics philosophy, two critical factors have a greater impact on combat performance than any other: training and selection. While we have written several online articles on training, we have yet to cover selection. The following article offers some concepts and guidelines that can help any unit (regardless of size) improve its selection, promotion and incentives system. The article is adapted from our newest book, Winning the Fight: A Conceptual Framework for Combat Performance Enhancement.

Some tactical professionals and units choose larger caliber, higher-powered weapons because smaller rounds have failed to neutralize the threat in a combat situation. However, such choices always involve tradeoffs regarding factors like magazine capacity, weight, recoil characteristics etc. The question to our readers and contributors is "how important is stopping power" based on your personal experience and preference?

The Special Tactics Staff is planning a number of new initiatives and training opportunities for 2018. Here is the summary of what you can expect to see…

When tactical professionals get together to train or share ideas, they often waste most of their time arguing with each other and have little to show for it at the end of the day. With the threat level rising both at home and overseas, wasting precious training time and failing to make progress as an individual or a unit can have deadly consequences. Therefore, we believe that trying to solve the age-old problem of the “tactical argument” is a very important effort.

Winning the Fight is now shipping and the Amazon Kindle version is coming soon. One of the oldest maxims of combat, is that the core fundamentals for success remain the same whether you are defending your home from an intruder or commanding a combined arms task force in conventional warfare. This book provides clear, concise, practical guidelines for how to increase your chances of victory in any hostile encounter and is designed to radically change the way you think about problems, assess threats, train for combat, plan contingencies and adapt to unexpected changes.

We are very glad to announce that the Comprehensive Combat Fitness manual is finally ready to ship. The manual provides detailed instructions for creating a comprehensive fitness program designed to directly enhance your combat performance in a real-life scenario. The manual is designed to be flexible and does not aim to replace your existing fitness program, but rather to help you achieve greater results using whatever works for you. It provides scientifically proven methods to integrate your workouts, manage your recovery, measure your progress and adjust routines to your specific mission requirements and body type.

After many delays, the Squad Level Military Urban Combat book is now shipping. The manual is over 400-pages long and provides a wide selection of common sense concepts and tactical options, designed to help military units develop their own mission-specific tactics, techniques and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for both low-intensity urban operations (COIN and stability operations) and high-intensity conventional urban warfare.

This second installment in our three-part article on combat fitness provides some examples and suggestions for how to develop “combat performance evaluations.” Most performance evaluations in military or LE units test only one skill/attribute at a time (marksmanship, fitness, casualty care) in an isolated environment. An effective combat performance evaluation tests multiple skills/attributes simultaneously under realistic conditions, with little or no warning provided to those being evaluated. The article provides examples for both law enforcement and military, with low-budget and high-budget variations included.

How can we prepare for the unexpected? Whether you are a military leader, law enforcement officer, or a citizen trying to protect your home, attempting to answer this question is critically important for your success. All the great military theorists in history, from Sun Tzu to Carl von Clausewitz, have emphasized the uncertainty of combat and historical trends suggest that our chances of predicting future events are extremely low. If this is the case, how can we prepare for what we cannot predict? Drawing from Special Tactics’ new book, Winning the Fight, this article suggests two ways to prepare for the unexpected and increase your chances of success in combat,

How must urban combat tactics change if the United States and its allies find themselves in a high-intensity conventional war against a modern combined-arms force like Russia, China or North Korea? While many tactics and general principles will remain the same, there are some very important differences between high-intensity conventional urban combat and the sort of precision Close Quarters Battle (CQB) that the U.S. military has grown accustomed to practicing over the past seventeen years.